 Where do we start? You can see it written all across my sons face as we look at the old kitchen. Well the only difficult bit is the first blow with the sledge hammer! After that it becomes easier and quite a lot of fun especially when you discover hidden inglenooks. Then comes the big clean-up and you realize that there's no going back now. The dining room is now part of the large kitchen area and so the walls and ceiling and concrete floor were all put in at the same time. We painted the walls with one coat to cut down on splashes as the next job was to lay 50 sq yds of chinese slate to make the floor
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 We used a mortar mix of 4:1 to bed the tiles which we did in rows defined with lengths of 2" x 1" battons nailed to the floor. This was done to ensure that the tiles were laid down in a straight line and evenly spaced. Tip: If your using cement for a job like this then wear rubber gloves to stop your fingers getting burnt away!. Chinese slate creates a wonderful floor when it's down, but the problems in matching the thicknesses of tiles drove us nearly demented. We also had 140 very thin green tiles which we had to "lose" in a random pattern. This was achieved with a computer and paint program one evening (No roof No floor No bedroom, but the computer was set up!) At last the floor was down and after two weeks on my knees, all that was needed was to seal it with a special coating to prevent oil and grease seeping into the porous slate. We could now concentrate on installing the Central Heating stove in the newly found inglenook. It was December, and with the damp from the new blockwork and plasterwork permeating our bones, we worked quickly to install the central heating...........Luxury. |
| It was time to stop for Christmas! | 
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